Staff issues… Who is going to deport them?

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With Donald Trump returning to the White House, there is intense interest in how the Republicans will carry out their immigration agenda, including a campaign pledge of mass deportations. His priorities could run into the realities faced by agents focused on enforcement and removals. The number of people already on its lists to targetAll Categories eclipses the number of officers available to do the work.

The Biden administration had narrowed deportation priorities to public safety threats and recent border crossers. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, says officials in the new administration will also prioritize those who pose a risk, such as criminals, before moving on to immigrants whom courts have ordered removed from the U.S.

But Homan has also signaled that enforcement could be wider: “If you’re in the country illegally you got a problem,” he said recently on Dr. Phil’s Merit TV.

It’s a tall order.

Deportation orders far outnumber staff

About 1.4 million people have final orders of removal, while about 660,000 under immigration supervision either have been convicted of crimes or are facing charges. But only 6,000 officers within ICE are tasked with monitoring noncitizens in the country and then finding and removing those not eligible to stay.

Those staffing numbers have largely remained static as their caseload has roughly quadrupled over the past decade to 7.6 million. About 10% of that workforce was pulled from their regular duties last year to go to the U.S.-Mexico border at times when immigration spiked.

Jason Houser, ICE chief of staff earlier in the Biden administration, said the number of officers needed to pursue those deemed a public safety threat are at direct odds with the goal of deporting people in large numbers.

“You’re not going to be able to do both of those with the resources you have, with the deportation officers you have,” Houser said. “Just the arithmetic, the time-intensive nature of those sort of arrests will overwhelm any ability to get to those large scale numbers.”

Mass deportations? The courts could face delays and may take until 2040 at the current pace